Gypsum Sand and Mountain Range September 17, 1968, White Sands National Monument, New Mexico These dunes are in a remote high desert near where the first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945. Edward Weston did not make use of the complementary shapes of the distant Santa Anna Mountains, from where the gypsum has been eroding for thousands of years. Enough for him was the ever-changing positive/negative volumes of the shifting sand and its accompanying shadows. There is nothing to see, in a pictorial sense, in the middle of the day. This is a place which is wholly dependent on direct sunlight for drama.